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Secrets of Best-Selling Self-Published Authors #3 - Matt Drabble

Today, I'm proud to bring you another interview in what is proving to be quite a popular series - Secrets of Best-Selling Self-Published Authors. In the hot seat is Best-selling U.K. author, Matt Drabble. His Amazon Author's page bio describes him as thus:

"Born in Bath, England in 1974, a self-professed "funny onion",
equal parts sport loving jock and comic book geek. I am a lover of
horror and character driven stories. I am also an A.S sufferer who took
to writing full time two years ago after being forced to give up the day
job. I have a career high position of 5th on Amazon's Horror Author Rank of which I am immensely proud. "GATED" is a UK & US Horror Chart Top Ten Best Seller & winner of the Full Moon Awards 2014 Horror Book of the Year. "ASYLUM
- 13 TALES OF TERROR" is a US Horror Chart #5 It was also voted #5 on
The Horror Novel Review's Top 10 Books of 2013 & is a Readers
Favorite 2014 Gold Medal Winner."ABRA-CADAVER" won an Indie Book of the Day award."

Without further ado, let's get in to it. Remember to make sure you check out Matt's excellent books and the other interviews in this series here on my website.

Who are you and where do you come
from? Do you think that your life experience has gone someway towards making
you a successful author in your chosen genre?

My name is Matt Drabble and I am
originally from a city called Bath in the South West of England. A few years
ago I suffered a nasty back injury and as a result I was unable to keep on
working a full time job. I have always liked writing and had many a notepad
full of ideas and the beginnings of books. One day I stumbled across an article
on Amazon’s self-publishing platform. With time on my hands I figured why not
turn one of my half finished stories into a full book, mainly just to see if I
could, so I did.

Where do you get your inspiration
from for your writing and for the way you brand yourself as an author?

For me King is King and long live
the King. I am increasingly working in the short story format and have produced
three anthologies so for and am currently working on my fourth. Inspiration for
a short story with a twist really comes from the world around me. It could be a
news article that makes me think “what if?” What if the outcome was different,
what if something else happened that changed the whole complexion? Normally I
start at the end with a twist and work backwards from there.

If you could pinpoint
one thing in particular that has grabbed readers of your work, what would you
say it is? I.e. What do you think it is about your work that makes readers buy
your books?

I always try and write
stories with some depth to them. There is a market for the gross out horror fan,
especially amongst younger readers, but my audience seem to be older readers.
I’d like to think that I write with a decent pace, interesting and exciting
situations, but all with three dimensional characters that you’ve come to care
about.

You have enjoyed
best-selling status – is there a particular moment in your career as an
author that you realized that you had done something right to get where you are
now? Can you pinpoint what it was that spiked your success to date?

When I first started
self-publishing about two and a half years ago, the market was less saturated
and you could do a free giveaway and I’d average maybe 3000 downloads a day
without any marketing. Now without any advertising you’d be lucky to see 100
[downloads]. I set myself a deadline of three books to see some improvement in
sales figures to give me any encouragement to keep going. Luckily, after the
first two sank without trace, the third offering was a horror thriller called
“Gated” which was a more deliberate attempt to produce something with more of a
commercial appeal. The going was slow but with a lot of patience and
determination sales started to pick up, reviews were good and I had a big free
giveaway weekend which netted me around 31,000 downloads. My next book was a
horror anthology called “Asylum – 13 Tales of Terror” which sold about 1600
books in the first month with no marketing. I am a firm believer that as long
as your work is decent, once people see it they will buy it. The obvious
problem with Amazon now is getting your book high enough up the charts for readers
to see it.

Did you try to get
publishing contracts for your books early on with traditional book publishers?
If so, did you have any success there or if not what was it that made you
decide to self-publish the majority of your work?

Yes. I sent out my
stuff to every agent and publisher that accepted submissions. I did finally
sign a deal with a publisher based in San Francisco who then unfortunately went
out of business about four days before my launch.

Why self-publish?

The great thing about
self-publishing is that anyone can do it; unfortunately, the bad thing is also
that anyone can do it. I believe that a lot of readers have had their fingers
burnt by poor work and can be more sceptical and less willing to give a new author
a chance. Self-publishing also gives an author time to grow and breathe, time
to develop and time to forge a very thick skin. The only way to get better is
to write and write a lot.

Disclosure/Copyright

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